Brilliant Ball of Fire

At the center of our Solar System is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, the Sun. Its gravitational pull holds the planet in orbit and it radiates its energy mainly as light and heat which makes it possible for life to exist on Earth. The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and halfway through the stable part of its life. After it exhausts the hydrogen in its core and the fusion reactions have stopped, the sun will undergo dramatic changes. It will balloon into a red giant, consuming Venus and Mercury, and Earth will become a scorched, lifeless rock. The Sun is both the creator and the destroyer of life on earth. Shooting in black & white comes natural to me. Because my first steps into photography were in a black & white darkroom, but also because I am suffering from protanopia, a type of red-green color blindness. So black & white is my natural habitat, the home where I belong. On top of that the high contrast black & white brings focus to the subjects and hints on the hidden, underlying drama.